Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, whose work was recently featured in a Forbes article, has devoted her career to understanding the relationship between mindset and performance, and in her most recent study, she finds that attitude is a better predictor of success than IQ.
Dweck maintains that people’s mindsets tend to fall into two broad categories: those who can’t adapt to difficult problems and those who see tough challenges as new opportunities to improve.
After reading about Dweck’s work, I began to wonder how “mindsets” relate to passion.
I have found that passion seems to be what spurs me and my colleagues to push past barriers to continuously improve. It’s part of what drives the most successful people to work harder, to consistently deliver more than expected and to solve problems and engage others in their journeys.
I’ve been fortunate in my career to be surrounded by intelligent, successful people—their gifts so palpable that they inspire others. But I’ve never believed that it was their intellects alone that got them where they are. These colleagues invariably have other qualities that have allowed them to have impact around them. And chief among them is passion.
Interestingly, the Latin root of passion means to suffer. Are the truly passionate willing to endure more to overcome obstacles because of how deeply they care?
Out-of-the-Box Perspectives 